


upper angel

by justaluckybug



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (there isn't one but everyone talks about it a lot so), Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Friends to Lovers, I apologize in advance, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Past Lives, Slow Build, Sort Of, Supernatural Elements, Swearing, Teenagers, and so like, idek know what this is, sad gay angry boys, so much swearing, tagging to be safe, they're pretty much still terrible people so, this is modern setting hs au but also there's still the force bc why not
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-12 02:17:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15985496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justaluckybug/pseuds/justaluckybug
Summary: The reason Hux doesn’t notice the strange car in his driveway is because it’s Tuesday—one week since the last time he heard from Ren. Six days since they let the sniffer dogs loose in the park, with the whole town inching behind, shouting the wrong name.Ren goes missing. Hux is totally fine with it, really.(or, another hs au that no one asked for)





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This fic blindsided me for no reason while I was listening to Real Peach by Henry Jamison, which has absolutely no bearing on the plot whatsoever but is still somehow the theme song of this fic. Give it a listen. 
> 
> The aesthetic for this is somewhere between Stranger Things, Scooby Doo, and Stand By Me - there's a mystery afoot and a bunch of teens are gonna solve it, apparently.
> 
> Disclaimers are: I've never written for this fandom, or written fic at all in a WHILE, so that's where we're at. I'm not a teenage boy, nor have I ever been one and I also don't play video games, but that's what teenage boys do, right? Basically, I have no authority at all to be writing this, but I'm doing it anyway. This is not at all beta-ed.
> 
> Enjoy.

The reason Hux doesn’t notice the strange car in his driveway is because it’s Tuesday—one week since the last time he heard from Ren.

Six days since they let the sniffer dogs loose in the park, with the whole town inching behind, shouting the wrong name. Two days since the vigil, where simpering parasites lit Mother Mary candles and said meaningless shit about community and “pulling together in difficult times.”

  

 

When Hux woke up that morning with the same headache he’d had for the past seven days, he went to school wearing the hoodie Ren leant him and pretended he didn’t know it was Ren’s. He let everyone stare at him and pretended he didn’t know they were staring and whispering loudly behind his back.

“When do you think they’ll give up, _”_ said Jessica in fourth period.

“Jessica,” said Emma G., glancing nervously at Hux, who was pretending that he couldn’t hear and that he wasn’t wearing his probably-dead best friend’s clothes.

“What,” said Jessica, “I just want to know when we can stop, like, tiptoeing around it. This is why people kill themselves, you know, because of the stigma.” 

Hux dug the tip of his pencil into his thigh through a hole in his jeans, worn there from frequent use. It was just to help him stay awake, usually, not keep him from murdering half the class.

Despite the pencil, he spent the rest of the day imaging it—he’d start with Jessica and Emma, then the boys who’d snickered in assembly six days ago when Principal Holdo said, “I know we’re all praying for Ben’s safe return,” and then mild-mannered Ms. Tico, who’d stopped him before class with a patronizing hand on his shoulder and murmured, “Are you doing alright, Armitage? Have you gone to see the counselor?”

The reason Hux doesn’t notice the conspicuous black sedan in his driveway before he can get away is because he’s still got that fuck-awful headache, he’s still wearing that fuck-ugly hoodie, and he’d tried to listen to music on the ride home, except the only songs on his phone are the ones Ren added—stupid tragic emo shit that Hux _hates._

So, it’s Ren’s fault, really, that Hux only notices the car after he’s let his bike fall sideways onto the lawn. The front door flies open, and his step-mother’s shrill, panicked voice shouts, “Armitage!” and then the suits file out, with their skinny black ties and squiggly earpieces just like in the movies. That’s when Hux finally sees the tinted-out windows and the government issue plates, and clues in.

 _Fuck you, Ren,_ he thinks.

Just before the first suit grabs him by the arm and pulls him into the car, spouting some bullshit about _national security,_ Hux thinks it again, loudly—

**_fuck you, you fucking dumbass idiot_ **

—just in case Ren’s still listening.

 

 

* * *

  

 

When they were fourteen, Ben jumped off a one hundred and thirty-foot concrete barrier into the reservoir. He broke his arm, sprained both ankles, and was featured in national papers with the headline, ' _It’s a Miracle' -_ _Skywalker Heir Escapes Watery Death._  

That article was euphemistic and celebratory, but others weren’t. In the days after, Hux learned a lot about falls and Ben’s case.

The highest recorded dive from a professional diver was one hundred and ninety-two feet. Sometimes, when people leapt from the Golden Gate Bridge, they survived, and that was two hundred and twenty feet. But Ben wasn’t a diver, and there was no way to fall accidentally from that part of the reservoir, which was cordoned off with two different barbed-wire fences.

Hux accepted what anyone with half a brain already knew: no one jumped from that height and expected to live.

Ben was in the hospital for a few days and out of school for three-weeks. Hux never went to see him.

The first time he saw Ben after he tried to kill himself was during fifth period science. Ben smiled, crooked like usual, and did that dumb half wave, half salute that made him look like a douchebag. He seemed fine—a little paler than usual and his left arm was wrapped in an obscenely red cast with what looked like two hundred stars drawn on it.

Ben spent the better half of class doodling in Hux’s notebook and then, when Hux snatched that away, in the outdated textbook spread out between them. Hux kept his eyes fixed on the periodic table for the whole forty-five minutes, reading the elements over and over so he wouldn’t look at his dumbass friend and do something stupid like fucking cry.

After the final bell, Ben caught Hux’s arm as he was slamming his locker and said, “Wanna come play Xbox? I’ve gotten pretty good one-handed,” as if things were normal and Ben hadn’t literally plummeted to his death twenty-three days ago. 

As much as he wanted to punch Ben in his stupid face for his casual attitude towards his own fucking life, Hux had a pretty good idea of how long he could go on feeling like a dying sun before he actually lost it. Better to have it out in Ben’s tiny attic room than at school.

“Whatever,” said Hux, which he knew Ben knew meant yes. 

 

  

“Want chips or something?” Ben asked after they hiked the three flights up to his room. He dumped his bag carelessly on the floor and slumped into his beanbag chair, drumming a beat on his red-casted arm like it was fucking Guitar Hero.

But Hux was having trouble getting air into his lungs. It was being in Ben’s room after nearly a month, and realizing that, if things had been different, he might never have seen it again—the shitty band posters, the million glow-in-the-dark stars that constantly fell off because of their cheap glue, the dent in the wall from last spring when Ben threw an Xbox controller in a Halo-fueled rage. There was a camping mattress stashed under the bed for when Hux stayed over, and a box of Wheat Thins hidden in the closet, even though Ben didn’t like them, because Hux did.

Ben tried to take this from him, this room—probably his favorite place in the whole fucking world. Hux could barely see with the fury clogging his eyes and ears and throat, a molten wave of white noise.

“Hux?”

“Shut up,” he snarled, “you stupidfucking asshole.”

“Hux—” 

“I could kill you, I could—”

“—just let me explain—”

“—strangle you actually dead and see how you like it—” 

“—wasn’t trying to kill myself!”

Hux curled his fingers tighter into the collar of Ben’s shirt, which he’d somehow gotten ahold of. Ben was standing again, looming over Hux because of some bullshit growth spurt that had him looking like a fucking goth beanstalk.

“One hundred and thirty feet, asshole,” Hux said, shaking Ben with each word, his voice awkward and raw.

“I know,” said Ben, like an idiot. He reached for Hux’s hoodie and hooked the fingers of his good hand in the front pocket, just held it like that “Look, I can’t explain it, I just knew I’d be fine. Okay?”

Hux refused to meet his stupidly sincere eyes, stared at the mole on his cheek instead. “No, not okay—are you actually insane? So, you, what, had a premonition? You had one of your fucked-up dreams and thought ‘well, guess I’m fucking invincible,’ is that it?” 

“They’re more than that,” said Ben, flat and low.

Hux liked Ben because they had the same fucked-up attitude and sense of humor, they liked the same games and Ben mostly didn’t suck at them. But the downside was he sometimes got like this—fucking melodramatic, like a made-for-Disney movie.

“More than what,” said Hux, not because he wanted to know, but if he didn’t keep talking he might actually strangle his best friend. His hands were already there, still clenched against the hot skin at the base of Ben’s throat. Hux could feel it when he swallowed.

“More than dreams,” said Ben, and then he frowned, like maybe he could hear the scream building behind Hux’s teeth.

When Hux’s step-mom told him over breakfast twenty-two days ago that Ben had jumped into the reservoir, he’d thought, _Ben’s an idiot_ —incontrovertible fact—and that he’d had a moment of morbid curiosity, like Hux did sometimes, like, _what if I just stepped in front of this train,_ but he’d actually let himself do it because he was a dumbass single child who craved attention and never thought things through.

And then, when Hux learned more about it, he’d thought, _Ben’s suicidal_ , but that didn’t sound right. For all that Ben was moody and serious and wore a lot of black, he was also a wuss, who cared about his parents more than they deserved, and also stupidly loved his dumb little cousin, who Hux knew uncomfortably well with how often they bumped into each other at Ben’s house.

Ben was selfish, but only with things like eating the entire bag of Doritos or stealing Hux’s kills during campaigns. When it came to big stuff, like letting Hux cheat off him during midterms or pretending he didn’t care when his mom missed another one of his dumb recitals, Ben was actually a big fucking pushover. It was one of the reasons they got on so well. That he would do something this monumental, this irreversibly hurtful, without some big breakdown first—it didn’t fit.

But it somehow never occurred to Hux that Ben was just batshit crazy, the real kind, like he thought he was Jesus, or had wings and could fly. Now that Hux really thought about it, it sounded way more likely than suicide. Ben was terrible at making decisions and he had a lot of existential angst about the afterlife, but he’d once told Hux that he had dreams of a past life where they destroyed planets together in an intergalactic army.

 _“How is it a past life if it’s in the future, dumbass?”_ Hux had said, rather than what he’d wanted to say, which was _“What the fuck, you crazy shit.”_

“You need to get this through your over-large skull,” said Hux, when all Ben did was continue looking grave. “Everyone has dreams. Just ‘cause your fucked-up psyche is more imaginative than others doesn’t mean you’re psychic, or a mind-reader, or a telekinetic space knight—it just means you’re a fucking weirdo, okay?”

Ben took a breath like he was about to defend himself. 

“No,” said Hux, “Shut up. Dives-off-fucking-bridges doesn’t get a say. Your dreams mean shit.”

“Hux—”

“Shut. Up.”

**_Hux._ **

It wasn’t that he was _looking_ at Ben’s mouth, just that he was facing him, so Hux knew for a fact that Ben’s lips never moved even though that was definitely his voice.

“What.”

**_If you ever shut up for even a second, this could’ve been a lot cooler._ **

“You’re in my head.”

**_Yeah, no shit, dumbass, that’s the whole point._ **

 

 

After the initial shock wore off and Hux spent a few completely rational minutes making sure he wasn’t asleep, or in a coma, it started to make sense. For someone as dramatic and attention-seeking as Ben, he’d done an adequate job keeping such a life-altering secret, but in hindsight, there had been clues.

Ben never paid attention in class, ever, and barely listened to Hux on a good day, but he still got straight A’s and always remembered things, like Hux’s favorite movie, the jellybean flavors he hated, or the day his mom died. He broke things constantly and had terrible depth perception, but his balance was unnervingly good. He went to the skate park maybe once every few months, but the height he got on that thing was like he practiced every day. 

“So,” said Hux, after his mind stopped whirring a little. Ben was back in the beanbag, but he kept bouncing his leg and fiddling with the Xbox controller even though it wasn’t on. “Mind-reading.”

“Yeah.”

“That it?” Ben opened the hand with the controller in it, except it wasn’t anymore, it was hovering six inches above his palm.

“Right. And the dreams?”

“I don’t know,” said Ben, still fiddling with the controller, spinning it in slow, wobbly figure-eights _with his mind_ , because that was a thing he did now. “Luke says—I mean, it’s not like there’s a rulebook or anything. But, they’re not just dreams, Hux. I have those, too. I can tell when they’re different.”

“So, your fucked-up psycho dreams told you to jump off a bridge—”

“ _No_ , Hux. God. The dreams aren’t the point, okay? I just wanted to see if I could. I’ve done it before, just not from that high, and—if I can concentrate on the air around—”

“I don’t _care_ , oh my god! Fuck your stupid powers, and your stupid dreams—”

“I’m telling the truth, Hux!”

“I _know._ You think I can’t see that with the _—”_ Hux gestured at the still-floating controller. “Look. This is fucked-up, and weird, and I’m still not completely positive that I haven’t accidentally taken LSD, and this is some sort of fucked-up _trip,_ okay? But I don’t care about your powers, or if you practiced beforehand, or _whatever_.” Hux’s voice _didn’t_ break on the last word, but he turned his back on Ben anyway and shoved his knuckles into his eyes to stop their burning. “What’s _fucked-up_ is that you jumped off that stupid bridge knowing you could die and you did it anyway, what the _fuck_ —”

“Oh,” said Ben, because he was an _idiot._ “I mean—I was pretty sure it would be fine.”

“ _Shut up_ , Ben, just—shut up.”

 

 

* * *

  

 

“Can I get you anything, Armitage? Some water?”

The woman across from Hux is small and slight, probably on purpose, so he’ll spill his secrets, or let them pull his prints from a water glass, like some fucking idiot who’s never seen _Law & Order. _

“No, thank you,” he says, because it still doesn’t hurt to be polite to the people who’re holding him hostage and, from what he’s gathered so far, have little to no concern for his legal rights.

“If you change your mind, just let me know. So, Armitage, that’s mouthful, do you have another name you prefer?”

“Hux,” says Hux, trying not to grit his teeth, to come off as aggressive or like he’s hiding something, even though both those are true. 

“Hux,” she repeats, graciously, as if she’s allowing him something by using the name. “I’m sure this is confusing for you.”

“Yeah,” Hux says, _no fucking shit._ “It is a bit.”

“We just need to ask you some questions, but the matter is . . . sensitive. That’s why the need for all this,” she gestures to the room, which is a generous word for it.

It’s an interrogation cell, clearly, with concrete walls and a concrete floor, the metal table and chairs nailed down, and a mirror on the far wall that may as well be a window for all it does to hide the fact that someone is watching them

“It must be hard,” she goes on, her voice sweetly sympathetic. It makes Hux want to bash her skull in. “With your friend missing—Ben Solo.”

“Yes,” says Hux. _Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium._

“When was the last time you heard from him?”

“I already told the police all this.” _Boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen._

The woman smiles, plastic and brittle. “We like to be thorough,” she says.

“He texted me,” says Hux, “Tuesday night.” He knows they already would’ve tracked that sort of thing. If he sees Ren again, he’s going to kill him for it.

“What did he text you about?”

“Nothing,” says Hux. He knows his face is burning, red and _terrible,_ can see it in the fake-ass mirror over the woman’s shoulder.

She smiles again. “Sometimes details that seem meaningless can crack the case wide open,” she spreads her hands open on the table. “What did he text you about?”

Hux tries to keep the flush from spreading to his neck. _Fluorine, neon, sodium, magnesium._ “It was nothing,” he says again, “really.”

 

 

Right around the time Hux realized he’d never liked girls and probably never would, was also around the time he started hanging out with Ren. The two separate developments had nothing to do with each other, but asserting this to anyone who was fucking stupid enough to ask him about it was always taken as shame at being gay, or maybe at being with _Ren_ , which—fair.

When they got older and people starting mocking in earnest, making sly comments about never seeing them apart, calling them _a matching set of fucked-up faggots,_ it stopped being annoying and started being no one’s fucking business. Rather than say, _I don’t know what you’re talking about,_ or _Ren’s not gay,_ it was so much more satisfying to say, _yeah and what are you going do about it_ , _you fucking dickwad._

It also happens to be the perfect alibi for why he and Ren are always sneaking off to the reservoir, to the park at night, to all the places they go to test Ren’s limits with no one looking _._ So, whatever. Let them think what they fucking want. 

  

 

“Why do you care,” says Hux, before she can ask about the text again. “About Ren. Kids go missing all the time, and he’s sixteen. Everyone thinks he ran away,” he adds, though that’s not what everyone thinks.

The woman seems to know this, her expression souring with pity. “Do _you_ think he ran away?”

“No,” says Hux. Ren had tried before and only lasted about four hours, as far as the strip mall three towns over. He’d texted Hux the whole fucking time.

“I’ll be honest with you,” she says, and Hux has to pinch his thigh to keep from scoffing. “We don’t normally get involved in missing persons cases, even when they involve minors. There are . . . special circumstances, that have caught our attention.” She pauses like this is meant to surprise him. 

He uses the moment to try to decide how he should react when she asks him about the mind reading. Disbelieving? A classic, “Are you crazy”? Or angry, because they’re making a joke of his best friend’s probable death?

“We have reason to believe Ben’s disappearance is connected to other cases—other children around his age who’ve gone missing over the past few months.”

Turns out, Hux doesn’t have to fake his surprise. It never crossed his mind that this whole Guantanamo Bay situation was due to anything other than Ren’s powers.

“What reason?” says Hux.

Obviously, this is better, that the government has no idea. He should be relieved. There’s no reason for the hollow, sinking thing expanding in his chest, except that—if the authorities think this is just some run of the mill kidnapping, then no one with any sort of power has all the facts, and the odds of Hux figuring this out on his own are slim to fucking none.

Or—the heavy thing grows heavier—maybe they’re right, maybe it is just a small-town sob story, “local boy goes missing, never found.”

But—fuck that. There’s no reason Ren would’ve been out that night. He would’ve texted. It had to be something paranormal, something to do with the mess of dumb magic shit that his family has been caught up in for years. There’s no other explanation. Hux won’t accept one.

“I’m afraid I can’t go into the details of an ongoing investigation,” she says. “But we could use your help. You were close to Ben. Did he have any contact with anyone unusual, was he a part of any clubs, or online chatrooms, things like that?”

Hux wants to answer, _“Ren doesn’t have friends, he doesn’t do ‘clubs,’ except for band, because he’s a fucking loser,”_ but the easy way she throws around past tense, as if Ren’s death really is a foregone conclusion—this federal agent who sees cases like Ren’s every day— 

“No,” says Hux, hating how his voice comes out, hating his face in that fucking mirror, grossly pale now that the flush is gone. “Ren never talks to anyone.”

“Alright,” says the woman, and then she adds, “You call him ‘Ren’,” as if she’s only just noticed. “Why is that?”

Hux digs his fingers harder into his jeans, wishing he had a pencil or something sharp. “It’s just a nickname,” he says.

“Alright,” says the woman again, calm and placating. Hux wants to dig her eyes out with a rusty grapefruit spoon. If Ren were here, he’d pick the grisly image from Hux’s mind and send one back, something with more violence, but less finesse. Hux knows Ren’s alive, because the space in his mind where they go to share terrible things is still there, even if it aches, has ached for days.

The woman is still talking: “—like to ask you a few more questions, but, as I mentioned, this is an ongoing investigation, of an especially sensitive nature. This isn’t something to share with your friends or put on Twitter. This is a serious investigation that requires incredible discretion. We would appreciate it if you didn’t repeat these questions to anyone. If you do, there could be . . . repercussions. Do you understand?”

While Hux had been expecting this sort of threatening from the start, now he’s a little confused as to why, if it isn’t because of some supernatural fuckery. But, whatever, what’s one more secret to keep.

“I understand,” he says. _“With Ren gone,”_ he wants to add, _“who the fuck am I going tell?”_

“Good. Did Ben ever mention the name, ‘Snoke’?”

All the stale, damp air gets sucked out of the room. Something in Hux goes very, very still. “No,” he says.

“What about, ‘Supreme Leader’?”

A distant, animal thing, like waking from a nightmare in the dark, the fear before you know if it was real. “No,” says Hux.

“No?” the woman echoes, her eyes gone sharp.

“Those names are weird as shit,” he says, ruining his efforts not to swear in a government facility. He feels like she must hear his rapid pulse in the thick silence of the cell. “I’d remember.”

“Alright,” she says. She closes the file on the table, some bullshit thing that he’s sure is just a prop, and stands. 

“What,” Hux says, “that’s it?”

“We’ll continue our investigation, of course,” the woman answers, stopping at the door to look back at him. “But that’s all we need from you right now. Thank you for your cooperation. Someone will come to show you out.”

He wants to say, _“That’s not fucking good enough,”_ and _“I’m not leaving till you tell me who that is,”_ but the stupid, choking fear is still swirling in his blood, begging him to leave, to run, to hide away in the space beneath his bed.

The same suit from before comes to get him. He keeps his heavy hand on Hux’s shoulder for the entire winding walk out of the building, and they get into an identical black sedan for the drive back.

Thirty minutes later, Hux is under his bed, his back pressed to the wall, his knees tucked up slightly, so his feet don’t poke out at the end. It’s a snug fit—he hasn’t had to use it in years.

 

 

“They’re not panic attacks,” he said to Ren once, in a sleep-drunk whisper, the dark and the million star-shaped pricks of light making it easy to spill all the shit he never meant to share.

“Anxiety attacks,” Ren corrected in the same soft tone, like _that_ was the point Hux was trying to make.

“Whatever,” said Hux, “they’re neither.”

“You’ve always had them,” said Ren, in the flat, low voice that meant he wasn’t referring to Hux’s childhood, but some time earlier. Ren always brought up his stupid fucking dreams whenever Hux was trying to be serious for once.

“Fuck off,” he said.

“It’s true,” said Ren, defensive. It pissed him off that Hux accepted the mind-reading and the telekinesis, and the “force-jumping” whatever, but refused to acknowledge his weird-ass dreams of other lives they’d supposedly had. It was just that Hux had to draw the line somewhere, for his own sanity, and he wouldn’t put it past Ren to sneak some extra bullshit in with the rest. Ren was already living in his own weird fairytale, so of course he wanted to make it even more dramatic, with past lives and _destiny._

“Great,” said Hux, rolling over so he couldn’t see the outline of Ren’s face in the dark. “Even with hundreds of reincarnations, I’ve always been a fucking wreck.”

“I have, too,” Ren said, like that made it better somehow.

“Surprise of the century.” Hux pulled the borrowed blanket over his head to end the conversation.

“It’s easier with you,” Ren whispered quietly, ages later, as if he thought Hux might be asleep, as if he wasn’t a mind-reader with exactly zero boundaries. Still, if Ren could pretend then so could Hux, who stayed silent and kept his breathing steady until sleep came for real.  

  

 

Under the bed, Hux takes his phone out from the pocket of Ren’s hoodie, the earbuds still attached from his bike ride home. He hesitates for only a second before putting them in and clicking open his messages.

The top conversation is from his step-mother, a panicked series of texts from this afternoon. The next two are from Rey and Ms. Organa, both dated Wednesday morning when Ren wasn’t in his room, wasn’t at Luke’s, or the garage, or the other usual places.   

The fourth one down is from Ren. Tuesday, 10:52pm. No emojis, which is unusual, a detail Hux has obsessed over in the past seven days. Just four words:

_you’ll hate this one_

and then a link, the preview deliberately hidden.

Hux clicks it and digs his nails into his palms as it loads. The stupid, angsty, slow-ass music crackles in his old earbuds. Ren’s right, for once in his fucking life. Hux _hates_ it. 

 

_You could be my unintended_

_Choice to live my life extended_

_You could be the one I'll always love_

_You could be the one who listens_

_To my deepest inquisitions_

_You could be the one I'll always love_


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another day, another headache. Hux is fucking sick of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still have no idea what I'm doing! Here's Chapter Two!

On Wednesday, Hux wakes up with the same headache he’s had for the past eight days. He wears Ren’s hoodie again, because it’s not like anyone’s going to notice, and even if they do, they’ll, what, whisper about it behind his back? That’d be new and interesting.

He expects the day to be the same as the last seven—soul-suckingly boring and too fucking quiet—and it is, until ten minutes into lunch when Rey Skywalker slams her tray down on the table and drops into the chair across from him.

“So,” she says, before he can tell her to fuck off, “heard you got kidnapped by the CIA.”

Hux raises an eyebrow. He hadn’t realized word got around already, but it’s no real surprise in this town that’s barely a fucking village.

“CIA,” he says, “FBI, KGB, who the fuck knows. They weren’t exactly _forthcoming._ ” 

Rey blinks, stupid and doe-like, the way Ren does, too, sometimes, on the rare occasion Hux manages to surprise him.

“Wait, really? I thought for sure your mom just lost it.”

“She’s not my mother,” Hux snarls, a reflex he’s never quite able to suppress.

“Ok-ay,” says Rey, “Whatever. She still called Aunt Leia in, like, a total panic yesterday, saying you’d been kidnapped by some guys in a government car. That really happened?”

Hux shrugs and messes with the shitty, still-frozen peas on his tray, trying to decide how much to tell her. That government woman—who never even gave him her name—told him not to talk about the questions, but she never said anything about the experience in general. 

“It happened,” he says.

“Damn. What’d you do?” Rey sounds almost excited for a split second, before she remembers, and her eyes dim again. Hux can’t relate—this fucking headache—he hasn’t forgotten for a minute.

Rey lowers her voice, “It’s about Ben, right?” Hux nods. “I knew it,” and the spark is back again, her inexplicable energy. “I knew he was missing, I knew—” she cuts herself off with a cough and chugs some chocolate milk to hide it, but Hux knows what she means. _Knew he didn’t kill himself –_ since that’s the leading theory, even if none of the adults will admit it.

“Yeah,” he says, feeling strangely generous, “me, too.”

He doesn’t like Rey, hasn’t ever liked her, because she’s loud and persistent, like a gnat. But the list of people who care that Ren’s gone and also believe in his sanity is about two names long, so it’s not exactly the time to be picky about allies.

“Hey,” she says suddenly, though it comes out a little too forced. “Do you want to come over today?”

Hux raises _both_ eyebrows.

“Not to my house,” she adds quickly. “I mean—we’ve been staying with Aunt Leia the past few days, and I just thought . . . we should _do_ something. Search Ben’s room, make flyers, post things online. Doesn’t he have some secret emo blog we can hack?”

Ren does have a blog. Hux follows him for the hilarity of it, with a grand total of 12 others, 10 of which are probably bots. But Hux gets what she means, feels the same awful itching of not _doing_ enough _._

He also hadn’t realized until this moment, but the idea of seeing Ren’s room again—he _needs_ it. He needs to sit in _his_ beanbag and kill some fucking Nazis with _his_ controller—the customized one Ren got him for his birthday last year, the one he leaves in Ren’s room because Hux doesn’t even own an Xbox. He remembers the terrible, suffocating feeling of losing all that, briefly, two years ago and the relief at getting it back again. It probably won’t be the same without Ren’s fidgeting, his stupid asthmatic breathing, or his constant shit talking every fucking thing, but even a shadow of it—after _eight_ _days_ —

“Okay,” he says, to Rey’s apparent shock.

Frankly, he’s pretty shocked too, because in no fucking universe would he have expected to voluntarily spend an afternoon with Rey Skywalker. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and Hux _refuses_ to live with this headache for the rest of his life.

 

 

Hux could probably live with the headache, he decides, when he walks his bike over to Rey’s usual spot after school only to find that she’s not alone.

“No,” he says and starts to turn back around.

“Hux,” Rey complains, that stupid whine that must be fucking genetic. “Don’t you think it’ll be easier if we have more eyes? They promised to help.”

_They_ being the other two stooges, Finn and Poe, Rey’s perpetual shadows. It’s not as if Hux can exactly throw stones about always hanging out with the same people, but at least Ren has a giant, usually-empty house, with video games and a flat screen. He has no idea what Rey gets out of her association with these two idiots.

“I think,” says Hux, “that if Ren knew you were going to let _them_ snoop around his room, he’d rather stay missing.”

“Hey,” says Finn, in the same tone. “We don’t care what creepy stuff your boyfriend keeps in his closet, okay. We’re just doing this to help Rey.”

As if that’s better—Hux imagines their indifferent hands rummaging around in Ren’s shit, finding the journal Ren thinks Hux doesn’t know about, reading the notebook on Ren’s bedside table where he writes his freaky dreams—learning things about him that are none of their fucking business. But Hux can tell by the familiar stubborn set to Rey’s jaw that he’s not winning this fight.

“ _Fine,_ ” he says, “Just don’t fucking touch anything.”

“This should be fun,” Poe mumbles under his breath. Rey says something back, but Hux blocks them out and bikes off. He doesn’t bother to wait for them. It’s not like he doesn’t know the way.

 

 

When Hux gets to Ren’s house, it’s empty as usual, the electric gate locked and the windows all dark.

He knows he should wait. He should wait for Rey, who will know the code to the gate and have the key to the front door. That would be the normal, polite thing to do. But Hux _also_ knows the code, which changes every two weeks but won’t for another few days. He knows where the spare key is, in the false bottom of the garden gnome.

When those idiots finally show up, they’ll traipse up the three flights of stairs to Ren’s room, probably throw their jackets on his bed, make themselves fucking comfortable in the beanbags that aren’t _theirs_.

It’s been eight days, and Hux has never really put much effort into etiquette when it comes to Ren’s family. He punches in the code.

 

 

Hux flicks on the bedroom light, but the eco bulbs that Ren’s mom buys take a while to warm up, so the room is bathed in a familiar dim glow for a few minutes.

**_the things we put up with for the fucking environment, right_ **

Hux whips around to stare at Ren’s beanbag, but it’s empty—of course it is. Just a memory made solid from how often Ren says the exact same thing every time he turns the light on. Hux breathes slowly and tries to ignore the throbbing pulse in the aching part of his mind. 

He wanders to the middle of the room, uncertain. He just wants to sit where he always sits. He wants to get the Wheat Thins out from beneath the shoe boxes in the closet and eat the whole fucking box. He wants the familiar chime of the Xbox turning on and the loading music to fill the room. He wants—

But Rey and the others will be here any minute.

He goes over to the bed and digs between the mattress and the footboard for the book he knows is there. The battered red moleskin comes out easily enough. Hux rubs his thumb over the words carved into the cover, in Ren’s terrible chicken-scratch letters, “OPEN AT YOUR OWN FUCKING RISK.”

Hux almost risks it. He fingers the leather tie that Ren’s used to replace the usual one, to make the whole thing more theatric, probably, but—he shoves it in his backpack. He’ll read it later, just in case there’s something useable hidden in Ren’s angsty ramblings and terrible song lyrics. Just, not here—not in the still loosening dark of this room, this room that he— 

“Hux! Are you up there?” Three sets of pounding footsteps. Hux turns just as the door swings open. 

“God, did you break in?” says Rey. The other two are staring in open curiosity, as if there’ll be blood on the walls or something equally gruesome. Hux follows their gaze, trying to imagine how the room would look if he’d never seen it before.

Clothes and shoes left in haphazard piles on the floor, three half-empty water bottles on the bedside table, a trigonometry textbook left open on the desk—they’d had a test on Wednesday—it was why Hux didn’t come over. They never get shit done when they study together, and Hux needed to pass one test without cheating off Ren, for his own pride.

It’s just an ordinary room. It could belong to any sixteen-year-old in the world, albeit a messy, careless one. It’s just—ordinary.

“I had a key,” says Hux.

Rey pauses from where she’s tugging at the knots in her Converse. “Ben gave you a key?”

Hux shrugs instead of answering. It’s probably better if she thinks that.

“So, where should we start?” Poe asks. Hux turns to find him leaning over Ren’s desk, squinting at the overcrowded pin board where Ren’s saved every movie ticket, polaroid, and arcade stub from the past five years. Hux curls his nails into his palms to keep from telling him to back off, that those aren’t for him to look at. Because Rey has apparently decided it’s _fine._

“What about this,” says Finn, holding up the notebook from Ren’s bedside table. It’s not nearly as dramatic as the real journal, just a spiral bound thing from Staples. He still shouldn’t be _touching it._

“No,” says Hux, then curses himself for it. He should’ve gone for more nonchalant—these nosey assholes aren’t going to leave anything alone if he makes it all out to be some sort of secret—even if it mostly _is_. “That’s nothing,” he says, trying to recover.

“Is it his _journal_ ,” Finn says mockingly, flipping through the pages. Hux digs his nails in harder. It’s not as if the idiot will be able to decipher anything. Ren’s handwriting really is terrible.

“Hey,” says Rey firmly. All three boys turn to look at her. “This isn’t a joke, okay? I know Ben hasn’t exactly been—nice, to you guys, but he’s still _missing_. This is serious.”

“Sorry,” says Finn, and he actually seems to mean it, placing the notebook carefully back where it was.

“So,” Rey says, finally toeing out of her shoes and turning to face Hux. “Where _should_ we start?”

_“How the fuck should I know,”_ Hux wants to say. Because, yeah, maybe Ren tells him about his super powers and his dumb dreams and how much it sucks when his mom isn’t around, but apparently he still has secrets big enough to get the CIA, or whoever-the-fuck, involved. _“I’ve been in his mind,”_ Hux wants to say, _“And I_ still _have no clue where he is. So, what could there possibly be in this stupid room.”_

“Probably his laptop,” he says instead.

“Wouldn’t the police have that, though?” Poe asks, peering around the laptop-less desk. 

“Probably.” They _should_ have it. But—Hux remembers suddenly—but Ren also has an iPad—one of those mini ones—because he’s kind of rich as shit. He barely uses it, except on long car rides or when he’s in bed and is too lazy to get up again for his computer.

Hux goes over to the bed, runs his hands over the comforter, the seam of the sheets. Ren’s mom definitely made it after he disappeared, probably before she let the police in. Ren never makes it. And there, fallen down by the headboard. Hux grabs it.

“But there’s this,” he says, turning to show the others.

 Rey grins widely. “I knew you’d be useful.”

It’s almost better than the laptop. Ren’s always suspicious that his mom snoops on there, as if she wants to know what fucking porn he looks at. But he never would’ve bothered to clear the history on an iPad, or to log out of the apps. If there’s anything useful to find online, it might be here.

Hux settles in his beanbag with the iPad and thumbs it open, sighing softly with relief when it still has battery.

“It’s locked,” says Finn stupidly, and way too close. Hux jerks forward, away from where the three of them have crowded around behind him.

“Do you mind,” he snarls. Finn and Poe back up considerable, satisfyingly spooked, but Rey stays put, unphased, just gestures impatiently.

“Come on,” she says, “do you know it, or not.”

Hux huffs, annoyed at her tone and also the presumption that he _wouldn’t_. It’ll be the same as Ren’s phone, because he’s stupid like that. Hux taps in _5950_ , and it opens, easy.

“Sweet,” says Rey.

“ _We’re in_ ,” Finn whispers in a comic, low voice, presumably just for Poe, but he’s pretty shit at whispering and they’re still too fucking close. Hux turns to glare at him, because now is not the time for fucking _memes._

Now that they are in, though, Hux doesn’t really know where to start. The thing is a fucking mess, crowded with six full pages of apps and absolutely no categories. As Hux swipes through each page and the magnitude of the tasks sets in, Poe says,

“Maybe we should split up?” When they all turn to look at him, he adds, “I mean, this is gonna take a while, right? Me and Finn could look for other clues, while you guys handle this?”

Hux’s eyes flick reflexively to the notebook, but it’s not just that. He thinks of the third desk drawer down, filled with old Lego figures, green army men, the teddy bear Ren loves too much to give away. Or the box under Ren’s bed filled with fucking bird feathers and smooth rocks and bright orange leaves, the shit he finds out in the woods and keeps just because he _likes_ it. Those things aren’t for them to know about. None of this is for them. If Ren knew they were here—

“Or,” says Rey, eyeing Hux’s fingers, gone white around the iPad. “We could get snacks.”

 

  

Hux follows them down to the kitchen because he doesn’t want them talking about Ren’s room behind his back or theorizing without him. He takes the iPad, shoved in the front pocket of his hoodie—he’s not letting it out of his sight now, not with the fucking CIA lurking around.   

When they get to the sprawling, white marble kitchen, Rey pulls out four different bowls and fills them, in quick succession, with cheese Doritos, frozen Girl Scout cookies, granola Craisins, and some sort of mini-carrot/broccoli medley. Hux is familiar with the extensive snack variety in this house, but it still always surprises him. Why do _two_ people need so much food?

“Nice,” says Finn, gazing at the spread with more awe than is strictly necessary. Hux opens his mouth to make some comment about small minds being easily impressed, but before he can, there’s a rumble from the driveway, a car pulling in. They all hold their breaths in sync.

Hux glances at the clock. It’s only just five. There’s no way it’s Ren’s mom, she never gets home before eight. The police? Hux wraps his arms around his middle, pressing the iPad into his stomach. Those idiots can pry it from his cold, dead hands.

There’s the slam of a car door, and then keys jingling in the lock.

“Rey?” a voice calls.

“In the kitchen, Aunt Leia,” Rey shouts back, frantically shoving the bowls of Doritos and Girl Scout cookies into random cabinets. She’s just gotten them closed when a woman walks in and stops short at the sight of them.

It’s been a while since Hux has seen Ms. Organa in person. She looks tired, her hair only up in a regular bun, rather than the intricate braids she usually wears.

“I thought I saw a few extra bikes in the driveway,” she says. She’s facing the counter, where the three stooges have gathered around the snacks, so she still hasn’t noticed Hux over by the table. He’s not sure what expression he should have when she sees him, if it’s politer to smile or not, when things are such a spectacular fucking mess.

“I invited them,” says Rey, with a smile – so, smiling is on the table. “Sorry I didn’t ask first.” Rey glances at Hux.

“Of course, you can—” Leia starts, turning instinctively to see what Rey’s looking at. “Oh,” she says then. “Armitage.”

There’s a particular way Ms. Organa always says his name. It’s not disapproving, exactly, just surprised, like she never expects him, even though he’s frankly always here.

“Hello, Ms. Organa,” says Hux, and he thinks about trying to smile, only she’s not looking at his face anymore, her gaze drifted downward. He glances down, too, worried she can see the outline of the iPad and thinks he’s stealing her electronics, but then he remembers. 

The hoodie is an old thing, soft and loose with age. Faded olive-green and, across the front, the words “Camp Tatooine” in white letters, cracked now from too many washes. Hux has never been to camp, but Ren has – four weeks every summer since he was ten.

Ms. Organa stares long enough for it to be noticeable, the rest of them staring now too. Hux uncrosses his arms to curl his fingers more soundly in the sleeves, no doubt calling attention to the size of it – it’s not that Ren’s bigger than him, he’s just _longer,_ like fucking Gumby.

“I was just about to start dinner,” Leia says finally, her voice gone a little distant. “Will you stay for dinner?” She looks at Finn and Poe briefly before turning back to Hux, but he can’t find his voice for some reason.

“Sure,” says Poe, breaking the moment with his usual ease. “Thanks, Ms. O.”

“Of course. Why don’t you kids take the snacks into the living room, and I’ll get everything ready.” Her tone makes it clear it’s not really a question, so Rey grabs a bowl in each arm and maneuvers past the boys, who start to follow her.

“Armitage,” says Leia, just as Hux is crossing the threshold into the hall. “Why don’t you help me chop some veggies?”

Rey catches his eye from where she’s already halfway up the stairs, her face comically stricken. “SORRY,” she mouths and keeps inching up the steps. As she gets to the top, she makes a break for it, sprinting up the next set, with the other two idiots fumbling to keep up. Hux sighs and turns back toward the kitchen, stealing himself for the awkward terribleness this is going to be.

“They left you to the wolves, huh,” Ms. Organa says as he walks in, her tone already different from just a few moments ago. Hux’s shoulders drop a little. He doesn’t know Ms. Organa well, she’s rarely at home when he’s over, but he definitely hadn’t recognized whatever charade that just was. Ren’s mom doesn’t cook.

Still, she’s crouched below the countertop, banging the cabinets open, as if she really is going to make something. Hux comes to stand by the breakfast bar and spreads his fingers on the cool marble, trying to stay calm. He hasn’t done anything wrong (except for the sort of breaking and entering, but he’d been invited, really, so it wouldn’t hold up in court).

Ms. Organa always puts him on edge, though. There’s an awkward tension that fills the room on the rare occasions she comes home while he’s still over, as if she’s caught him and Ren at something untoward, when it’s always just Xbox.

“Do you need help?” he asks when the seconds tick by with nothing but pots banging together. Just as he speaks, Leia appears from behind the counter, holding the bowl of Girl Scout cookies Rey hid earlier. She doesn’t respond, just carries the bowl to the table and sits down with it, toeing out of her high heels. She eats two thin mints and then, still chewing, gestures at the seat across from her. Sufficiently thrown, Hux follows her and sits.

She tilts the bowl at him, so he takes one. The crunch of the frozen chocolate is a shock of unwanted sense memory—Ren likes to take these to the reservoir on hot days, likes the way the cold contrasts with the heat of the outcrop, warmed from the sun—

“I’m sorry,” Ms. Organa says, as she fishes another thin mint from the bowl. “I should’ve checked in with you, to see how you’re doing.”

Startled, Hux stutters, “Oh, no, that’s—fine. I’m fine.” Leia nods and wipes the crumbs from her hands on the edge of the tablecloth.

“I know you and Ben are _close_ ,” she goes on, to Hux’s growing discomfort. He digs his fingers into his thighs under the table, the insinuation in her tone bothering him more than it usually does.

“And I know the police asked you already,” she says, “and I’m sure you have no reason to lie to them, but. I just want you to know—you won’t get in any trouble.” Leia curls her hands together on the table, the way Ren does to keep himself from fidgeting. “If you know where Ben is, if you know what happened, we don’t even have to tell them. You can just tell me, and I’ll sort everything out, alright? You can just tell me,” she says again, not quite able to mask the desperation in her voice.

Just then, Hux hates Ren _so much_ he can barely breathe with it, hates his stupid iPad and his stupid hoodie and his stupid, _shitty_ songs, hates that he’s put Hux in the kind of situation where he has to talk to Ren’s _mom_ , has to _disappoint_ her.   

“I don’t know,” he says, “I wouldn’t—even if I was going to go along with some kind of—stunt, I’d never let it go on this long, I swear. I don’t know.” Ms. Organa nods like he’s just confirming what she thought. She spreads her hands along the tablecloth, smoothing away invisible creases.

“Well,” she says, “I thought I’d ask.”

“I’m sorry—”

“No,” says Ms. Organa, “Armitage.” He looks up from where he’s been watching her hands, moving back and forth on the table. “This isn’t your fault, you know that? You’re—” 

He really hopes she doesn’t say _“good”_ or _“kind,”_ for the love of god—

“—good for him,” she finishes. She opens her mouth to continue but then, maybe sensing his debilitating embarrassment, changes her mind. 

“Well,” she says again, definitively, and stands, swiping the bowl of thin mints and stashing it back in a seemingly random cabinet. She pulls open the drawer where Hux knows they keep the takeout menus.

“What do you think,” she says, “pizza?”

 

 

Poe and Finn stay long enough to devoir a whole mushroom pizza before they suddenly remember a test they have the next day and beg off. Hux figures Rey said something to them. Either way, he’s glad they won’t be riffling through Ren’s stuff, but _he’s_ not leaving, not until he finds something to make this horrible, awkward night worth it.

Ms. Organa shoos them out of the kitchen around seven, and Hux follows Rey silently back up to Ren’s room.  

“So,” she says, when he’s settled in his usual beanbag, “the iPad?” She sits in Ren’s spot. It doesn’t bother him. It _doesn’t_.

Hux digs it out from his pocket and unlocks it again. This time Rey doesn’t crowd around him, just leans her elbows on her knees and looks at him, expectant.

It’s the same mess as before, but Hux tries not to let it overwhelm him. It’s not as if he doesn’t know what apps Ren uses the most—messages, the web, a few random games he’s obsessed with—he hates that he can never beat Hux at Words With Friends.

Hux checks Safari for still open tabs, iMessage for unknown numbers. He even opens all the social apps even though he knows Ren doesn’t use them—nothing. Conspicuously nothing. Ren would’ve had to manually log out of most of these, purposely close his tabs. Not a sign of someone taken against their will.

After a while, Rey says, “So?” and Hux has to clench his teeth to keep from chucking the thing at her. It’s not her fault, he tells himself, and it’s not _his_ fault either—it’s Ren’s fault, and his secrets, and his stupid dramatics, like everything has to be fucking Shakespearean play. If he did this, if he really left on his own—

“Nothing,” says Hux, sharply. He stands and tosses the iPad on the bed, grabs his backpack roughly from where he stashed it by the closet.

“Nothing?” Rey echoes, standing too, following him to the door. “What do you mean nothing?”

“I mean, there’s fucking nothing, what else do you want me to say? I’m going home.” 

“Hux!” 

He’s shoving his shoes on by the front door when he notices Ms. Organa watching from the hall, and some old, ingrained reflex of etiquette kicks in. “Thank you,” he says, “for having me over.”

Leia leans against the stair railing, just as Rey comes down. She stops on the third step and they both watch as Hux opens the door and stands awkwardly in the threshold. The cool October air makes the hair on his arms stand up.

“You’re always welcome here, Armitage,” says Ms. Organa.

But as Hux makes his way down the driveway and starts to bike home, he has a sinking, gut-deep feeling that he won’t ever see that house or that room again.

 

 

“Do you want to come over?”

Hux looked up from the Bunsen burner he was fucking with. “What.”

Ben was doodling some kind of caricature of Mr. Ackbar as a fish-headed sea monster. “I just got the new Xbox,” he said, without looking up from the paper. “We could play Call of Duty. My mom doesn’t know they have age restrictions, she just buys whatever I put in my wish list.”

“What,” Hux said again. He didn’t have a ton of experience being invited over to people’s houses, but he was pretty sure some kind of friendship usually came first. Hux had sat next to Ben in science since he got to this stupid backwater town four weeks ago. They’d talked before, but about cell structures and food chains. Not anything that would be cause for _this_.

When Ben finally looked up and caught sight of the baffled expression on Hux’s face, he scowled and said, “Never mind, whatever.”

And that might’ve been it.

Mr. Ackbar droned on for a few more minutes about safety goggles and second-degree burns, and then Hux said, “Will there be snacks?” 

“Yeah,” said Ben immediately, so excited Hux nearly rolled his eyes. “We have, like, the best snacks.”

“Fine,” said Hux, “Whatever.”

 

  

Hux has been staring at the same paragraph for forty minutes when his phone buzzes next to him on the bed. He stills.

It could be Rey. It could be Phasma, his partner for the shitty history presentation next week that they haven’t done any work for. It could even be the fucking CIA. There is a perfectly normal list of people who could be texting after ten on a school night. _It’s not Ren,_ he tells himself and flips the phone over. The lock screen has already dimmed, so he thumbs it open.

One new message, just a single word,

_Hux?_

The last text in the conversation is from Tuesday, at 10:52pm.

**_Ren,_** Hux thinks as loudly as he can, **_I am going to fucking kill you._**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who commented! Seriously, so appreciated. Feel free to leave more - I'm making this up as I go so I will take any suggestions!

**Author's Note:**

> Hux's name in this fic is Armitage D. Hux (the D stands for Denial).


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